Less than 9 % of voters moved to the first round of the legislative elections on Saturday December 17.
by Lilia Blaise (Tunis, Correspondence)
Neither speech nor crowd bath on Avenue Habib-Bourguiba, emblematic of the Tunisian Revolution. Sunday, December 18 in the evening, President Kaïs Saïed had still not expressed himself on the participation rate of the first round of the legislative election. With less than 9 % of voters, the figure is deemed “catastrophic” by the opposition, which claims the departure of the Head of State. “He must be absorbed, nobody expected such a low rate,” said political science researcher Mohamed-Dhia Hammami.
The “democratic construction by the base” promoted by Kaïs Saïed, whose new parliament must be one of the components, promoting individuals to the detriment of political parties, was brutally swept on Saturday. A camouflet for the President of the Republic, who questions his legitimacy and that of his political project, more than a year after his coup of July 25, 2021 and the dissolution of the Parliament. After the low participation rate (30.5 %) in the constitutional referendum of July, massive abstention in the first round of the legislative elections weakens all the more the strong man in Tunisia as negotiations are underway with the International International Fund To allow the country, in full economic slump, to obtain a loan of $ 1.9 billion.
The opposition, which had mostly boycotted the ballot, shot red balls on Kaïs Saïed this weekend. Ahmed Nejib Chebbi, president of the National Salvation Front, a coalition of opposition parties, compared the participation rate in an “8 -degree earthquake on the Richter scale” and claims the president’s resignation. A position shared by the Islamo-conservative party Ennahda, who “praised the decision not to go to vote for Tunisians”. ABIR MOUSSI, the head of the Destourian party, anti-Islamist and who claims to be the inheritance of the president of independence Habib Bourguiba, asked for the organization of an early presidential election.
” Not the success of the opposition “
What echo find these attacks within the population? “You have to be vigilant, believes Afef Daoud, president of the National Council of the Social Democratic Party Ettakatol. If the Tunisian people have shown their disavowal as to the project proposed by the President, that does not mean that he wishes to return to Former political practices. “Massive abstention by legislative election was not translated into a challenge in the street, where the opposition, in dispersed ranks, still struggles to mobilize. “This abstention is not the success of the opposition, which does not happen today to present a serious alternative,” insists Afef Daoud.
The participation rate is a reflection of a particularly dreary campaign, with mostly unknown candidates, blurred political programs and a complete absence of ideas for ideas in the media. When going to the polls, some voters confided in not knowing the candidate for whom they were going to vote, nor the real role of the future parliament. After ten years of transition and crises in the country, “Tunisians have moved so much from the political thing that they no longer have confidence in institutions and Kaïs Saïed in fact,” explains Mohamed-Dhia Hammami.
The preliminary results of the first round must be announced on Monday by the electoral body. Subsequent support from the president, the former president of the president Brahim Bouderbala, in the running for a second round in his constituency, qualified the abstainers as “antipatriotic and cowardly” in an interview on a private radio station. An early activist, candidate close to the president, Ahmed Chaftar awarded, for his part, the “reluctance of Tunisians to the vote on media attacks against the electoral process and to speculators who make it come out that the country continues to live shortages” . A rhetoric with conspiracy accents, dear to certain circles close to the Head of State.
Within the opposition, some are already preparing after the Kaïs Saïed. At the end of the election, Admiral Kamel Akrout, former national security advisor to President Béji Caïd Essebsi, called, on social networks, to a “peaceful transfer of power” and claimed the drafting of a new Constitution and an electoral code as well as the implementation of a constitutional court.